Study Shows Chimps’ Beds Are Cleaner Than Most Humans’ Are

Sure they get a well-deserved rap for the occasional bouts of poop-slinging, but a new study shows we shouldn't be too snooty about our evolutionary cousins the chimpanzees: their beds are actually cleaner than ours.

According to a recent study by biologists at North Carolina State University, humans' beds are rife with skin and even fecal bacteria, while examinations of chimpanzees' beds -- which, by the way, they make every day -- showed far less evidence of such nastiness.

The study, which was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, used samples collected by biologists in Tanzania, who found the surprising results.

"We know that human homes are effectively their own ecosystems, and human beds often contain...types...of organisms found in the home," explains lead author Megan Thoemmes, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State.

The samples collected from where "our closest evolutionary relatives" rest their heads proved much less dirty compared to the bacteria in many humans' beds.

"We found almost none of those microbes in the chimpanzee nests, which was a little surprising," Thoemmes noted. "We also expected to see a significant number of arthropod parasites, but we didn’t."